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Matthew swans into Milton Keynes Theatre
Matthew Bourne talks about his revival of the ground-breaking Swan Lake.
SWAN Lake returns to Milton Keynes Theatre next month. Here choreographer Matthew Bourne talks about his controversial interpretation of the classic ballet.
Matthew Bourne why is your company, New Adventures, touring Swan Lake again?
It has proved very popular over the years. We can go into the history of it a lot really, but it changed my life that piece. It took us to different places, it took us all over the world, it took us to the West End, to Broadway and all around the country.
It started that regular touring thing we do now and started to build up our audience and our following for all the other pieces we've done.
Without Swan Lake I wouldn't still be here, doing what I'm doing.
I suppose I used to think the audience would run out for a piece but actually the more you do it the more an audience want to see it. There's a whole new generation of people who haven't seen it or those who have only just heard about it.
Do you get requests for this piece?
Yeah. We get lots of requests for various pieces all the time actually, but it is one of the most popular pieces. It's a piece that a lot of people tell me they saw or were persuaded to see a couple of years back and it made them find a new interest in dance.
There are a lot of young people who saw the show when they were at school and it then inspired them to go on to dance, particularly young guys and now they're dancers.
Swan Lake was their original inspiration. There are several people like that in the company at the moment, it was the first thing they saw that made them want to be a dancer.
What's it like, knowing you have inspired people in that way?
It feels brilliant. One of the things I most enjoy about the work I do now is the inspiration it gives to young people.
This company, it connects with young people in a unique way because they look at the stage and they see these people and they see people they sort of recognise, it's not so far away from who they are as people, and therefore the inspiration is there.
Even Richard Winsor, who played Dorian in Dorian Gray, is going to make his debut as a swan this Christmas and that's his story really.
He was inspired to dance through seeing it when he was 16, or something. And that is a lovely story. That ambition to be in this piece, he's been in many other pieces for us, but never that one, it's a life-long ambition.
How do your other dancers feel about this piece? It must be quite exciting for them to perform something so famous.
I suppose it has become quite iconic. I was thinking the other day, they're quite young a lot of the company, the new swans who have come in, they're 17, 18, 19. They were toddlers when we first did it, or very young kids, so they've grown up with it as a piece that has always been there.
So for them, with Swan Lake, there are two versions; the female swan version and the male swan version and they have grown up with that.
It's odd to think that, when we first did it, it was kind of unthinkable and no one could imagine whether it could possibly work. And now there's this generation of kids who just accept it as a classic in its own right.
What came first the idea of casting male swans or the desire to do Swan Lake?
Well, I'd only done Nutcracker by that point for Opera North with another company, so I was thinking there's no point me doing Swan Lake as a contemporary choreographer unless I have an idea that is different enough from the classical version to justify doing it.
The classical version is maintained by lots of companies, it will always be there and that version exists and those companies are there to perform it. They've maintained tradition. So I had to have a different enough idea to warrant doing it.
It was always 'what if the swans were male?' and 'what if the Royal Family slightly resembled a modern family we would recognise in more modern times?' (laughs).
By the time I made it in '95, the newspapers were full of Royal scandal. These days we don't really get anything like that but back then it was every day, Diana, Fergie and Charles and Camilla all the time, it was all about the difficulties of being in the Royal Family.
So a troubled prince didn't seem so far away from the truth, a prince who couldn't be with the person he wanted to be with seemed to be a story we could tell.
Around that time, I was actually walking though St James Park one day and saw the swans there with Buckingham Palace in the background and there was the piece (laughs). It was all there.
That was the idea but at the time but it was so frowned upon that we had suggested the idea of male swans, before people had even seen it.
It was very much thought of as a crazy idea. Some people thought it was going to be funny 'oh it's going to be such a laugh your Swan Lake when you do it' and I was like 'oh, well I wasn't thinking about it that way really'.
Some other people were saying 'you know it's a tragedy don't you, you are going to take it seriously'. And, of course, it ended up being a bit of both in a way.
It does have humorous bits in there and then the bit where everyone thought it would be very funny – the bit with the swans – is actually where it turns very serious.
That was the shock of it when people first saw it, and the shock of it was that the swans worked and when they came on the audience were captured in a way they didn't think they were going to be.
Your Swan Lake has such a strong look and style. Do you think the aesthetic has anything to do with its impact?
I was looking at pictures the other day, and you do get used to something if it's been around for while, but I actually looked at what Lez Brotherston did and thought that's what makes the show iconic as well, the look of those swans.
He created something. You know, the way we look at a female dancer in her feather headdress, tutu and pointe shoes and she becomes a swan and we think swan even though it's nothing like a swan, he's done the same for men.
You look at them and there's no beak, no webbed feet and they're not the shape of a swan particularly but something about it conjures up the feeling of a swan in a very simple way and it's become as iconic as anything else, just that look.
Lez Brotherston had a enormous amount to do with this production becoming the success it became.
Were you nervous about how audiences would respond to it back then?
Initially, we may not have even got it off the ground. We had a lot of trouble raising money for it. I remember having one meeting with one person who might have give us some money and they very much frowned upon it, they didn't think it would work and didn't want to put money into it.
But I suppose a part of me did think it would work, you have to have a bullish feeling for something you think will work even though the people around you think it's a stupid idea. When we were making the piece all of us in the rehearsal room quietly believed in it.
We just got on with it and forgot what they were saying outside. It wasn't until the day it opened, when I was sat there with the glitterati with the dance world all there, that I thought 'oh my goodness, this is crazy'. It felt very scary on the first performance.
You just come out of this period of intense work and suddenly present it to all these people and you don't know what they are going to think.
But it was one of those magical evenings where you can feel it all coming together and feel the audience responding to it, it's sort of amazing really to get that.
Do you consider Swan Lake as your signature work? You talked earlier about all the things it has allowed you and New Adventures to do since.
Well, it is the work I am most known for, obviously, but all my works feel like signature works to me; they all have a lot of me in them.
They all have the things that I like, so to a certain extent the whole body of the work represents me.
But Swan Lake is special because it was the first time I approached something in a really heartfelt way, I suppose. So it came from a deeper place in me, where I think a lot of my work before that was more entertaining but not necessarily something that would move you or take you to those sort of places.
Swan Lake was something I approached very seriously and I think I hit on something new and I started to enjoy moving audiences as well as making them laugh and entertaining them. For that reason, I think it is a big turning point for me and I've done a similar mix ever since of pieces that will make the audience feel something.
And the way it was perceived at the time was actually unheard of. The day after it opened I was on the news, not an arts programme, actually on the news. Sitting on the news desk of CNN, being interviewed on the news and that doesn't happen in the arts very often.
The papers printed pictures of Adam Cooper as a swan next to pictures of Margaret Fonteyn as a swan. I thought if they would pick up on anything they would pick up on the Royal scandal, but it was very much the swans and the image of the swan that captured the attention of the media.
Very quickly after that, Cameron Mackintosh said 'you must do this in the West End'. It never would have occurred to me to do that, I never would have thought that was possible to put a ballet like that in the West End. All these things were very big learning curves, trailblazing really. Things like that, I'd never done before.
And of course, the other thing is that happened a little way into it was Stephen Daldry asked us if he could use it at the end of Billy Elliot and the grown up Billy becomes the lead swan in Swan Lake. It just seems so right.
I'd actually read the script a couple of years before and I didn't like the ending of it, where he ended up being the Prince in Swan Lake at Covent Garden. I thought 'oh dear, what a boring ending'. It's not even a great part in classical ballet.
So that kind of sealed its international reputation, in a way, because wherever we go in the world people have seen the film and they love that ending and they know what that is. Billy has become like a fictional member of our dance company.
You like to tinker with and develop your work. Have you made any changes to this show?
I've done more on it this time since I have when we did it for Broadway, which was in '99. I've had more chance this time to be in the studio, to plan and do changes. I've done several big changes already and plan to do more.
I'm really excited about it this time. We've got a really wonderful cast and the principles are all people that I really enjoy working with and we've a got a great new bunch of swans.
I really feel that it's a chance to develop the piece a bit. I never really leave them alone, as you probably know, but I do think this one has been left alone for a long time now and it's time to spruce it up a bit with some fresh ideas.
Adventures has performed Swan Lake more times in 12 years than The Royal Ballet has in its entire 70 year history. What do you think about that?(Laughs)
I love that. I love that idea because it surprises people and it's also one of the things which isn't appreciated about our company, the amount of performances we do do.
If you compare it to other dance companies, The Royal Ballet will do Swan Lake every couple of years but they will do 14 performances or something, so it doesn't stack up a lot over 70 years. They only add a few performances each time they do it.
We're doing eight shows a week for months on end, so it's very different, we're doing it more like a commercial musical. Whereas they're doing it every couple of days for three weeks, so it's a very different approach.
But people are still shocked by that statistic because they would assume 'The Royal Ballet are always doing Swan Lake aren't they?' (laughs)
It's not just performances you're stacking up. Swan Lake has also achieved highly in terms of awards. Is it important for you to be recognised in that way?
It's not important, it's an icing-on-the-cake kind of feeling. Winning an award is always a nice thing to happen but it doesn't make me feel differently about the piece.
That was amazing, all the things that happened with it, especially in America with all the Tony's and everything. It was so odd to be nominated for best director of a musical and then to win it!
I never dreamed that would happen. I was hoping I might win the choreography one, because I thought it was my best chance of ever winning a Tony Award (laughs). I was really hoping that would happen, but to win the director one as well; two in one night, was incredible. That was another really memorable night for me.
Are you happy to be talking about Swan Lake still? Is it nice to be revisiting it?
It's been a long break now, about three years or so since we last did it, so I'm always happy to talk about it, yeah. I'm very aware it's still something that people love and there's a whole new audience out there who have only seen it on DVD or heard about it, so I'm really happy it's going out and touring again. I feel I have got the opportunity to make it better than ever.
What are you working on next?
I'm writing a film treatment based on my stage version of Cinderella, but that will be a film rather than a filmed stage show, for the BBC.
I'm hoping to be involved in a film of My Fair Lady that's happening but I have to wait to see who's going to direct it first. I'd like to choreograph the numbers if I get on with the director.
Has anyone been linked with it yet?
There has been but then they've gone. It's been an on-going process but I'm not sure where it's at. I'm there and waiting to do it if someone wants me. (laughs)
Swan Lake appears at Milton Keynes Theatre on Feb 1 until Feb 6. For tickets and information contact the box office 0844 871 7652 or go on-line www.ambassadortickets.com/miltonkeynes
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